As you’ll see below in the PowerPoint prepped for the August 28 rail committee meeting, there were three companies that bid on the project: Brookville Equipment Corporation, Inekon and CAF, with the 94-year-old Brookville coming up the winner by offering to build two streetcars for $9,422,837 (give or take a “5-percent supplemental work contingence”). Others were interested, but balked in part because of the small size of the order: two cars.

As you’ll note, Brookville only makes one modern streetcar, the Liberty, which is what Brookville proposed to Dallas, says Joel McNeil, who heads up the company’s sales division. He’s not prepared to delve into further specifics — “because it’s not official and the board still needs to vote on it” — but he does answer a few, ya know, general questions about the streetcar itself. Such as:

“The cars are customized to a city’s needs, so a seating capacity can be altered on how they want to lay out the seats,” he says when asked about seating capacity. “A typical 66-foot-long car has between 41 and 47 seated passengers depending on how the customer specifies it, then you have a capacity of between 120 and 130 standing.”

And, no, it won’t be green. “We build a vehicle for what the customer wants, so they get to pick the exterior color, the interior layout, the color scheme. It’s all dependent on how the city wants to handle it.” One car is due in May 2014; the second, by September 2014.

Tomorrow the DART committee-of-the-whole is also scheduled to forward to the board a contract for the design-build portion of the streetcar project, which will go to …

… a joint venture between Alameda, California-based Stacy and Witbeck, Inc. and Dallas-based CARCON Industries & Construction. The contract’s worth $27,963,520 — $23 million, of course, coming from those federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant funds, with the rest coming from regional toll funds. Says the contract, “The term of
the contract is completion of the work by October 31, 2014.” As for the route, for those who still have questions …

The Union Station to Oak Cliff Streetcar TIGER Design Build Project consists of advancing the design from 10% to 100% and constructing an approximately 1.6-mile streetcar alignment operating on an at-grade track in a dedicated, bi-directional streetcar lane from Union Station over the Houston Street Viaduct. Track placement would be located in the outside southbound travel lane. South of the Trinity River the track alignment would transition to Zang Boulevard and extend along the median of the roadway with a passing track located at the Oakenwald streetcar stop. At the Colorado Boulevard intersection the track alignment would shift and extend to the westbound travel lane along Colorado Boulevard, terminating at the Colorado Boulevard and Beckley Avenue intersection. There are a total of four proposed stops, all located within the roadway right-of-way.

You’ll also note the one and only option added to the contract, which comes as no surprise to those who’s followed along since Day One: “Extension of Project Limits in the direction of Davis St. & Zang Blvd.” Because, after all, this is but the beginning of the beginning of the streetcar project.